National Institutes of Health
National Library of Medicine

Resources

Engineering the Genes: Ethical Dilemmas in Modern Biotechnology

Grade Levels: Colleges and Universities

Academic Topics

  • History of Science and Medicine
  • Health Education

Overview

This module accompanies the exhibition From DNA to Beer: Harnessing Nature in Medicine and Industry, which features the discovery of recombinant DNA technology in the 1970s. This module begins with that discovery and comes up to the 2010s, showing the continuing relevance of the issues that the exhibition raises. How far should we go in our desire and ability to remake nature and ourselves? What happens when technologies intended for one use have other, perhaps unexpected, outcomes? What role (if any) should intangible values—like justice, dignity, or the inviolability of nature—play in debates about technology? These questions are still as pressing as they were in Pasteur’s day. This module encourages students to see how broad issues like these come into play in debates that might at first glance seem as though they are about purely technical matters. Both the module and the exhibition argue that biotechnology is as much about our visions of what our society and our world should look like as it is about scientific discovery and technical advance.

The module is composed of six one–hour classes grouped into three thematic parts, each part centered on a different aspect of modern biotechnology. Each class provides a selection of resources, including primary documents, films, images, and secondary works, along with suggested questions for class discussion and debate.

Information about the module’s author, suggested use, and academic objectives is also available online at About the Author.

Lessons

  1. Lesson 1: Biotechnology as the manipulation of life: the recombinant DNA debate of the 1970s

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    The first lesson examines a historical moment of divisive controversy at the birth of modern biotechnology—how scientists and laymen disagreed about ways in which to define the risks of recombinant DNA research, and whether and how to regulate such research and the fledgling industry it fostered.Close

  2. Lesson 2: Biotechnology as big business: patenting life from Chakrabarty to Myriad

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    The second lesson focuses on how United States patenting policies—particularly the patenting of life forms—shaped and fostered the biotechnology industry. The 2013 Supreme Court case challenging the gene patents held by Myriad Genetics provides a focal point for the ethical, legal, and policy issues.Close

  3. Lesson 3: Biotechnology as a new eugenics: genetic testing and reproductive technologies

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    The third lesson explores the ethical questions raised by the genetic screening of gametes, embryos, and fetuses, and the genetic testing of potential parents. Such genetic tests grant a disputed power to choose the next generation’s traits. The class materials set debates over the ethics of reprogenetic testing into the context of the history of eugenics, and by presenting specific case studies encourage students to ask at what point—if any—choice goes too far.Close

  4. About the Author

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    Nadine Weidman has a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology from Cornell University and is currently a lecturer in the Department of History of Science at Harvard University.Close

Learning Outcomes

After completing this class resource, students are expected to:

  • Students will learn about the recent history of biotechnology (since the 1970s) and understand the historical background for the developments, discoveries, and debates that they read about every day in the news. They will gain an appreciation for the ways in which biotechnology has been shaped, over the course of its development, by cultural, political, economic, and religious contexts.
  • Students will practice historical thinking: advances in biotechnology that we take for granted today were once in contention (and could become so again), and various alternatives to them existed. Students will also learn to interpret and analyze documents from the recent past as well as secondary sources.
  • Students will gain exposure to various ethical stances often invoked in the biotechnology debates: Kantian deontology, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, Rawlsian justice theory. They will come to see ethical debates as conflicts over deeply cherished and important values, and will learn to identify and articulate the values as stake in ethical dilemmas.
  • Students will understand that technology is not neutral but is invested with social meaning and value, and often carries with it the requirement for a particular social order.
  • Students will become acquainted with arguments on all sides of the biotechnology debates, and learn to advocate a position with which they might not personally agree.